Hello, dear friends!Welcome to this episode of the podcast, brought to you by the Australia Buddhas’ Practice Incorporated.
Today, I’d like to explore with you what ignorance is, what enlightenment is, and how to awaken from illusions and walk the path of light and truth!
1. What Is Ignorance?
Ignorance is not darkness, nor is it a complete lack of understanding. Ignorance refers to mistaken views and incorrect perceptions—treating illusions as reality and mistakenly believing we understand things clearly.
From a young age, we are influenced by various concepts, many of which are wrong, yet we become accustomed to them and assume they are correct. For example, we like certain foods and dislike others—these preferences are habits formed through conditioning. But are these likes and dislikes truly correct? No! They are illusions, mistaken feelings shaped by our upbringing.
Ignorance is living in illusion, mistaking the false for the true, the wrong for the right. We think we’ve gained something—like delicious food or beautiful sights—believing we’ve “gotten something.” But in reality? It’s like trying to scoop the moon from the water: no matter how many eons you try, you get nothing! These things are inherently illusory, arising and ceasing, vanishing in an instant.
Why does ignorance lead to failure in everything we do? Because ignorance is an erroneous state. If we don’t awaken, we remain trapped in illusion, mistaking the false for the true and suffering for happiness, inevitably leading to failure.
2. What Is Enlightenment?
Enlightenment is correct understanding and accurate perception. It’s like solving a math problem: if every step is correct, the result will be correct. But if the principle and rules are right yet you misplace a single decimal point, the entire result is wrong. Life is the same—any small error can lead to complete failure.
Enlightenment is a state of being entirely free from mistakes throughout the process. From start to finish, you understand things correctly, apply the right methods, and naturally achieve good results. The degree of your enlightenment determines the extent of your correctness; the degree of your error reflects the extent of your ignorance.
3. The Root of Ignorance
Where does ignorance come from? It stems from the mistaken concepts we’ve been conditioned to accept.
For example, people from Sichuan love spicy and numbing flavors because they were raised with those tastes. Someone who doesn’t like spicy food might, if forced to eat it repeatedly, eventually develop a taste for it. These likes and dislikes are illusions, not real. It’s like watching a TV drama: when the characters cry, you cry; when they laugh, you laugh. But it’s just a fictional scene on a screen!
In real life, it’s the same. The world before our eyes is like a daydream, constantly changing. Yet we cling to food, beauty, and other things, believing they are real, craving and pursuing them. But have you truly obtained them? No! They are illusions, ungraspable. We think we’ve gained something, but in reality, we’ve gotten nothing. The true self is there, but we can’t find it. This confusion is ignorance—it’s a mistake!
4. Know Illusion, Walk Toward Light
How do we escape ignorance? The first step is to know illusion!
Knowing illusion means recognizing that everything is illusory, like a dream. When you dream at night, a fire in the dream can burn you, and falling into water can drown you—it feels real, right? But when you wake up, you realize it was just a dream. Reality is also a waking dream, a daydream!
Everything before us is an illusion. You might drown if you fall into water, but if you cultivate to the point of awakening, you can wake from this dream. The problem is, we don’t want to wake up! Why? Because we fear that if we wake, there will be nothing to eat, wear, or enjoy. We cling to illusions and refuse to face the truth.
But what is the truth? The truth is “permanence, bliss, self, and purity.” Once you awaken, the obstacles in the dream can no longer affect you. If you see reality as a dream, all obstacles vanish. “Whatever the mind conceives, it achieves” is not an empty phrase, but the prerequisite is that you must not make mistakes. To achieve good results, you must plant the right causes and provide the right conditions, without a single misstep.
It’s like growing a watermelon: if you place it in a square mold, it grows square. If you want your life to move in a certain direction, you must learn to control the causes, conditions, and results of the illusion. Farmers know how to grow crops, but if you arrogantly think, “I can do it too,” that’s ignorance! Arrogance and afflictions lead to underestimation, and the point you overlook is the point of your failure.
5. How to Attain Enlightenment
To move from ignorance to enlightenment, what should we do?
First step: Know illusion. Recognize that the world before us is no different from a dream—it’s all illusory.
Second step: Learn to control illusion. Just as in farming, you know what causes yield what results: give water when needed, apply fertilizer when necessary, protect the crop from pests, and the result will naturally be good. Life is the same: if you want to become a certain kind of person, plant the right causes, provide the right conditions, and precisely control every step.
Third step: Depart from error. Move away from mistaken causes, conditions, and results, and let go of the attachment to treating illusions as reality. But “departing” doesn’t mean abandoning—it means using skillfully! Knowing it’s a dream, you still accompany sentient beings within it, awakening them.
Ultimately, when you thoroughly know illusion, you will no longer cling to it. Whatever you wish to achieve, you can, because you’ve left behind error and established the correct causes, conditions, and results.
6. Conclusion
Dear friends, ignorance is error, confusion, and mistaking illusions for reality. Enlightenment is correct understanding, knowing illusion, and moving toward wisdom.
Knowing illusion is not difficult—just recognize its illusory nature. Then, transform yourself with the wisdom and vision of the Buddha, replacing mistaken habits. In the end, you’ll find that in this dream of life, you can master it freely and become whatever you wish to be!
Thank you, everyone! See you next time!
